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The day seems distant when average Americans held to the faith that hard work would secure them employment, a lifestyle they could depend on. And that if they passed that work ethic on to their children, along with a good education, then each generation would fare better in life.

Instead we are a nation haunted by an unemployment rate stalled at more than 9 percent, with little hope on the horizon. Family balance sheets have been blown away by the real estate collapse, causing credit problems and trillions of dollars wiped out in equity. Wages have barely budged. Yet the costs of middle-class security — health care, college educations — have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, Congress engages in brinksmanship over raising the federal debt limit, which for any rational government would be technical detail. But for our dysfunctional government it’s a contrived drama that may plunge us into a new economic crisis. Whatever deal is reached — if it is reached — will not raise a dollar of new tax revenue from the rich but will certainly entail budget cuts that hurt everybody else. And yet, oddly enough, each party in Congress argues fervently that it is standing up for middle-class America.

So how come the middle class continues to struggle?

To answer that question, we need first figure out what this nebulous thing called the middle class is. Let’s leave aside the fine sociological distinctions about white collars and blue collars and pink collars, and say this: The American middle class is vast middle tier of people who work to live, and who strive to work a little harder to get a little more in life. Middle class people may save, but they don’t accumulate enough wealth to live off. Almost every buck they get, they spend.

The latter point is important: That spending creates jobs. In fact, in our economy, middle class consumers are the real job creators. Depress their income, and you depress employment.

We’ll never get around to holding politicians truly accountable unless this fuzzy middle demographic — a massive one as a potential voting bloc — gets wise about where it came from in the first place, and how it foundered.

The great prosperity of the American middle class in the late 20th century didn’t just magically transpire. The important groundwork was laid by the federal government via investment. Consider what the creation of the federal highway system did for developers and builders who created our suburban communities and all of the businesses that followed. Or the impact of the G.I. bill on so many people who returned to the workforce after World War II.

People didn’t just sweat their way to upward mobility in the past. The federal government’s role in the creation of American middle class is undeniable and central. And our middle-class republic didn’t crash because average Americans forgot how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and keep their noses to the grindstone.

I’m not going to pretend to have all of the answers, but I know one of the major causes in our decline has been the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us. That gap is the widest it’s been in a century, and the future isn’t looking promising. Job growth is disproportionately coming from low-wage areas like food prep and retail clerks.

The growing cleavage between the classes can be traced back as far as 1979. That’s when gains in productivity began to outpace worker incomes. That fact alone can help explain the frustration of many Middle Americans.

Some of us achieved the college degree our parents never earned, and we could afford the finer things they couldn’t. Most working Americans just soldiered on. Wage gains kept flat-lining or falling in comparison to the costs of living. The climb of upward mobility got steeper. Wage shortfalls could be made up with E-Z credit, for a while anyway. The ruins of that way of life are all around us.

Much is made of the massive federal deficit these days. I have a way we can solve that: more jobs. More jobs mean more growth and more tax revenue. Problem is, America’s job creators — the middle class consumers — are tapped out. Business owners can’t hire until they have consumers to sell to. That leaves the job of stimulating demand to the government. Time for government to lay the groundwork for our future by investing in our middle class.

That is, if we really want an America with a middle class.

(Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.)

(c) 2011, The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Tribune Media Services

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With a deranged narcissist in the Oval Office and his lackey controlling the Department of Justice, there is no point in looking to the federal government to curb police violence. Instead, President Donald J. Trump will do everything in his power to encourage it. In the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd, he has demanded that governors crack down on protestors: "You have to dominate. ... If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time," he told them.

Moreover, most local police authorities are under local control -- mayors, city councils, district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs. That's where the accountability for police misconduct begins.

<p>But Congress could take a significant step toward reining in that misconduct by passing a bill to end the practice of allowing the Pentagon to give surplus war equipment to local police departments. There is simply no good reason for police in any city -- from Washington to Wichita -- to roll down the streets in armored personnel carriers, armed with battering rams and grenade launchers. They are not going to war. American citizens are not enemy combatants.</p><p>Several Democrats have already announced their intention to introduce legislation to end the practice. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, has said he would introduce such a measure as an amendment to the all-important annual defense policy bill -- which would give it a decent shot at passing since Republicans are deeply invested in the defense bill.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>After protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer, local law enforcement authorities took to the streets in armored carriers, further inflaming tensions. They showed little inclination toward restraint or de-escalation. The same thing is occurring in cities around the country right now.</p><p>Off-loading surplus military hardware to local police departments was never a good idea. The practice started back during the 1990s as violent crime peaked and local and federal authorities were feverishly devoted to winning the so-called war on drugs. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the program ramped up, doling out battlefield gear even to small towns no self-respecting terrorist ever heard of.</p><p>Law enforcement agents became enamored of images of themselves decked out like soldiers on special-ops missions. According to <em>The New York Times</em>, the website of a South Carolina sheriff's department featured its SWAT team "dressed in black with guns drawn, flanking an armored vehicle that looks like a tank and has a mounted .50-caliber gun."</p><p>Poor neighborhoods are subjected to the military-style hardware much more often than affluent ones. And the consequence of that sort of policing is often less safety, not more. When the police behave like an occupying force, the residents return the favor -- treating them with suspicion and contempt. That hardly makes it more likely that police will get the information they need to solve crimes.</p><p>The administration of President Barack Obama understood that and curbed the Pentagon program after Ferguson. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Pentagon reported that local law enforcement agencies had returned 126 tracked armored vehicles, 138 grenade launchers and 1,623 bayonets, the Times said. Pause for a moment just to consider that. Why would any police department -- even New York City's army of 36,000 officers -- need bayonets and grenade launchers? Once you implant in the heads of police officers the notion that they need battlefield gear, their use of violence against unarmed citizens escalates as a natural consequence.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>But guess what happened when Trump took office? He removed Obama's restraints on the Pentagon program, once again allowing local law enforcement agents to go to battle against the citizens they are sworn to protect. No surprise there. In 2017, Trump gave a speech in which he urged police officers not to worry about injuring a suspect during an arrest.</p><p>Police violence against black people is a problem as old as the nation itself. It didn't start with Trump's presidency and won't end when it's over. Rather, the racist culture that is embedded among so many law enforcement agencies showed itself clearly when major police unions enthusiastically backed Trump's election. When Trump is finally gone, the campaign to eradicate that culture can begin in earnest.</p>